Sandra Chapman: Using innovative thinking, and brain training, we can rewire the brain at every level

What is your cur­rent job title and orga­ni­za­tion, and what excites you the most about work­ing there?  As the founder and chief direc­tor at the Cen­ter for Brain­Health at UT-Dal­las, what gets me excit­ed every day is being on the fore­front of defin­ing and encour­ag­ing cog­ni­tive brain health fit­ness for peo­ple of all ages. We are…

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What is the combined effect of physical and mental training?

Phys­i­cal exer­cise and men­tal exer­cise are both ben­e­fi­cial for the brain. Each can improve brain func­tions and decrease risks of cog­ni­tive decline over time. This rais­es the ques­tion of their com­par­a­tive and com­bined effects: Is one bet­ter than the oth­er? Are their ben­e­fits addi­tive (1 + 1 =2) or per­haps even syn­er­gis­tic (1 + 1…

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There’s no single silver bullet to treat depression (not even aerobic exercise)

Exer­cise And Depres­sion Revis­it­ed (Neu­roskep­tic blog): “A new study has found lit­tle evi­dence that aer­o­bic exer­cise helps treat depres­sion, con­trary to pop­u­lar belief…Danish researchers Krogh and col­leagues ran­dom­ly 115 assigned depressed peo­ple to one of two exer­cise pro­grams. One was a stren­u­ous aer­o­bic work­out — cycling for 30 min­utes, 3 times per week, for 3 months.…

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Update: New brain science leads to new tools and to new thinking

We often view mem­o­ry, think­ing, emo­tions, as com­plete­ly sep­a­rate enti­ties, but they tru­ly are part of the same process. So, if we want to improve brain health, we need to pay atten­tion to the “weak link” in that process. In today’s soci­ety, man­ag­ing stress and neg­a­tive emo­tions is often that weak link, as we discuss…

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Why Both Aerobic and Cognitive Exercise Promote Brain Health

USC Davis researcher Liz Zelin­s­ki just brought to our atten­tion a very insight­ful meta-ana­ly­­sis  (sys­tem­at­ic analy­sis of pre­vi­ous sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies) titled Extend­ed prac­tice and aer­o­bic exer­cise inter­ven­tions ben­e­fit untrained cog­ni­tive out­comes in old­er adults: a meta-ana­ly­­sis. OBJECTIVES:  To exam­ine whether ther­a­peu­tic interventions 

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